​My cell phone is still packed with photos I took of my dad and son in front of the Preston Center Metro Grill on its final day of operations in August 2008. And now this? Teresa Gubbins breaks the news that the Gaston Avenue Metro, an institution since '68, is also about to close. I just got off the phone with owner Wayne Adams, whose dad James bought the place when Wayne was 9, and he confirms: The end is near. End of March, to be precise.

Last I talked to Wayne was when we were sitting at the Preston Center counter on August 21, 2008. He told me then that as much as it hurt to bid farewell to that location, the Gaston Ave. spot -- which was already an operating eatery when his dad bought it -- was "my baby." This afternoon he told me: "It's still my baby." But he's sold the property -- to Baylor, Teresa notes. Wayne says he doesn't want to get into specifics till we sit down and have a long talk later this week for a follow-up I'll post on City of Ate. All he'll say are: "There are a lot of circumstances" leading to this sad bit of news, which, as Teresa notes, also includes the moving of The Petal Pusher flower shop next door.

Wayne did say he told the employees only yesterday about the closing, and that he hopes to do on Gaston what he did at Preston Center -- turn the adios into "a positive closing ... a celebration." (At Preston Center, during the week of closing you could get burgers and biscuits at '63 prices.) Still, I hate to see this happen: My grandfather started taking me there when I was a wee lad, and God knows how many cigarettes and cups of coffee I consumed at the Metro way back when it had the best jukebox in town, especially after Deep Ellum clubs closed at 2 in the a.m. How many best-ofs did we give this place? A million, looks like.

​Speaking of the Trinity River and the levees (though, really, when are we not?) ...

Late Saturday afternoon, the 6-year-old who lives in my house and I were heading home after a long day spent digging through dusty relics in the Antiques and Design District. I'd wanted to check out Lula B's West, the boy loves those animal skulls on display at Lost Antiques on IndustrialRiverfront, and last weekend's vendors' street fair seemed like an ideal time to kill some time.

Anyway. On the way home I had the bright idea of heading down to Trammell Crow Lake at Trinity Park on Sylvan Avenue. Maybe we'd toss around the football in the cool evening air after a few hours spent soaking up all the musty we could manage. Instead, we just marveled at how, from a distance, marble cows covered in graffiti look rather lifelike from a distance.

The boy also wanted to know if "Shmux," scribbled here on poor Elsa, was the same word Mommy occasionally calls Daddy.

More pics after the jump. The ghost of Trammell Crow -- and the women in his family for whom the cows are named -- is not amused.More >>

Sara Kerens

Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where less than 1 percent of the students are white.

​Jon Dahlander, spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District, posted a comment on Unfair Park today that perfectly expressed the school system's official position on the preservation/demolition of Adamson High School. It blames abandonment of the school on the people who have been fighting to preserve it. And then it says the school system is going to preserve Adamson.

Dahlander's spin was in response to my column of last week, "Adamson High School Alums Are Fighting DISD to Preserve the School Building and Their Bond With Its Students" (I don't write my own headlines anymore). More immediately, it was in response to an item on Unfair Park yesterday reporting that Mike Rhyner over at The Ticket was talking about the column.

Dahlander's lengthy comment made several key points. The first is that Jim Schutze gave a false impression: There are no plans to tear down Adamson.

The second point: "The current campus will remain standing and will be re-purposed."

Third: "There has been structural movement under the existing building since it was initially constructed in 1915. Several attempts have been made to mitigate this but the soil continues to cause shifting."

Fourth: The district hired Corgan Associates, described by Dahlander as "noted historical architects," and Corgan came up with two ideas. One was to preserve only the front wall of the school and tear everything else down. The second was to tear everything down and rebuild a new school that would be a mirror image of the old school, using some of the original bricks.

Then Dahlander said the alumni, who have been fighting to save the school, turned down the mirror-image idea: That, he said, tied the district's hands. Corgan had already said its first idea -- save the front wall only -- was no good because the front wall might fall down while they were working on it and kill some construction workers (so thanks a lot for that idea, Corgan).

Since the alums had nixed the mirror-image idea, DISD had no choice, according to Dahlander, but to abandon the building (which is what I said they were doing in my column. I never said they were demolishing it, even though abandoning will amount over time to the same thing).

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​As the Dallas City Council reached the end of its painfully long discussion about the proposed ethics reform, Dave Neumann said, "It was productive for the council to go through this briefing, but that's OK."

Yup, the council began its agenda meeting this morning chatting about fine points of the amendments and stopped around 4:30 p.m. That, dear Friends, is the very definition of a briefing, especially when the result is a half-assed straw vote.

It wasn't that there weren't attempts to delay this sucker before the debate took on a life of its own and killed itself. Early on, a motion to defer the item until December 16 was narrowly defeated 8-7. After lunch, a motion to reconsider deferring it failed again -- this time 7-7, with Carolyn Davis out of the room. Strangely, Delia Jasso and Ann Margolin switched sides of the fence. (Jasso had voted against deferring it earlier, and Margolin had voted to defer.)

When everyone woke up and it was time to make a decision, Mayor Tom Leppert conducted straw votes on three of the four components, noting that "at least 10" council members voted in favor of each. The gift-giving component was not discussed. As for how the other three turned out, honestly, it's a little foggy after watching the madness for hours on my computer, but I'll do my best after the jump.

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Trees out, JCPenney in. Yup, sounds like Dallas.

Shortly after Intern Alex wrote this strong piece, we wondered what had become of the Timbercreek Apartments on Northwest Highway and Skillman. Schutze exposed the city council vote in May 2006 when Mayor Laura Miller stood alone in opposing new zoning that kicked families, trees and wildlife to the curb to make way for a concrete shopping palace. And then another chapter was added to the story when the council considered a fill permit related to the site, and Mitchell Rasansky and Angela Hunt admitted they were wrong when they voted the first time.

Oliver Robinson, vice president of development management at Trammell Crow Company, confirmed that he's handling the project but refused to comment when we called a couple weeks ago. He claimed a press release would be issued soon.

No such luck, but it turns out Back Talk has the latest goods from CB Richard Ellis on TimberCreek Crossing, and former council member Sandy Greyson reveals why Robinson might be under a gag order.

They have an application pending before the city's board of adjustment that asks for an extension of the tree replacement time from two years to five years. They also want a waiver from a requirement to provide a bond or letter of credit and instead want to provide a loan commitment letter from a bank. But the bank's letter says that it has "no obligation to insure that these loan funds are actually used for tree mitigation."

The board of adjustment hearing is on Monday, August 17, at City Hall. People who support tree preservation in Dallas are planning to attend and are encouraging others who care about a green Dallas to attend the hearing or send comments to the board of adjustment staff.

After the jump, a photo of what used to be on the site and a PDF of TimberCreek Crossing's brochure.

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Don Johnson

Reunion Arena, as it looked but one month ago

Estela Hernandez in the city's Public Information Office broke our hearts with the following e-mail that just landed in the Unfair Park in-box. Read it for yourself.

Re: Reunion Arena Demolition

Scheduled implosion of upper concrete seating decks demolition-Canceled

STATEMENT: Upon further review of the arena structure, A&R Demolition has found an insulation membrane (non-asbestos) covering the concrete masonry ring wall along the upper level. A&E has determined that the blasting operations could create a potential environmental hazard resulting in contamination of on site fill material. Therefore the upper decks will be removed by mechanical means with equipment and not imploded. The City of Dallas also recognizes that due to this change the need for Dallas Police and Dallas Fire Rescue departments for the transportation and security of explosives will be eliminated.

Public Works and Transportation and A&R Demolition are committed to operate and make decision of good environmental stewards for the City of Dallas.

They are also committed to incomprehensible sentences and to killing joy.

Sam Merten

The Transportation and Environment Committee failed to vote Monday on the proposed booting ordinance, choosing instead to schedule a third meeting before the city council's July recess. In the meantime, booting companies continue their aggressive tactics, as we witnessed last night during a ride-along with a Dallas police officer patrolling the Central Business District.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., officer Stace Hayward pulled up to the private parking lot at the corner of San Jacinto and Olive streets, where three other officers had responded to five citizens who were booted despite claims they paid using the machine.

Amy Bond and Jackie Collier returned from "Jazz Under the Stars" at the Ross Avenue Plaza to find boots on their vehicles and were forced to pay $100 plus unpaid parking to have the boots removed. However, Bond claimed she paid to park with a credit card and put the receipt on her windshield, and Collier said a machine malfunction didn't allow her to pay in full.

"It wouldn't take our money. It wouldn't take our credit card. We tried multiple times," Collier told Unfair Park. "The most we could get it to take was $2, and [a booting company employee] admitted it was a machine malfunction."

Bond said the employee arriving to remove the boots was unable to verify her credit card payment as her receipt was no longer on the windshield, and he told her changing her tire would result in a theft charge. "This is absurd," she said.

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Ever wondered what the abandoned vault beneath the old Federal Reserve Bank on 400 S. Akard Street looked like? Swell. Because HTML pioneer and blog-advice guru John Pozadzides took some folks from GeekBrief.tv on a tour, and, in return, they offer this video worth a look-see. --Robert Wilonsky

GeekBrief.TV #486 from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

In the wake of the news of CD World's shuttering, a Friend of Unfair Park who swears we've never met but who clearly shares my love of Dallas nostalgia sends along this link to a year-old piece about Dallas's long-lost record stores. Among those name-checked: Hit Records, the Melody Shop, Metamorphosis Records and Oklahoma-started, Dallas-ended Sound Warehouse, shuttered in the mid-1990s by Blockbuster. Which leaves plenty of space for those who recall their beloved Peaches, which Mom preferred for whatever reason; Direct Hit in Exposition Park, which seems to be a description of the neighborhood reeling from the loss of Bar of Soap and Meridian Room in recent days; and the likes of VVV and the Record Gallery. Ah, Record Gallery. --Robert Wilonsky

I just got back in town -- seriously, bags are still packed -- and, c'mon, this shows up in my mailbox: a missive from Kenny Brattain, otherwise known as the guy who was going to reopen Trees. Or, looks like, not. As you no doubt recalls, a few weeks back we wrote about Brattain's frustrations with the city -- specifically, with the myriad hoops through which he had to jump in order to get his specific use permit, as required by council last summer after the Deep Ellum Association worked to make it harder for "the wrong element" to open a club in Deep Ellum. Looks like their plan worked -- a little too well. And it's not like the city necessarily disagreed with Brattain; said Dave Cossum, assistant director of the city's plan division, "it's an unhappy process for some."

For Brattain, especially.

"THANK YOU CITY OF DALLAS, YOU WIN!! WE GIVE UP! WE WILL NOT RE-OPEN THE TREES BUILDING!"

That's the subject line of Brattain's e-mail that he sent out to various members of the media, as well as Mayor Laura Miller and council members Gary Griffith, Elba Garcia and Pauline Medrano. The rest of his mad-as-hell, go-to-hell, plans-all-shot-to-hell missive is after the jump. --Robert WilonskyMore >>